


Phenomenology

by The_Librarian



Category: inFAMOUS: Second Son
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Neon - Freeform, Philosophy via delinquency, Thinking too hard, Video, What does it feel like, concrete, powers, smoke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 23:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6215074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Librarian/pseuds/The_Librarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a while, Delsin starts noticing how much smoke itches - and it sets him thinking.</p><p>Musings on what it feels like to have super-powers. Some swearing for effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phenomenology

**Author's Note:**

> And now for something completely different - an inFAMOUS: Second Son ficling. For no particularly reason I played through it this week - found it surprisingly engaging for a game I've never had much interest in before now. It does some intelligent things with a reasonably stock story and has a whole wealth of fridge brilliance swimming under the surface.
> 
> Thus: a small diversion into the aboutness of super-powers and the hilarity of me trying to write a convincing American teenager. There may be more of these if I find sufficient motivation in the image of Delsin being propelled repeatedly into the sea while trying to master a new power.

After a while, he starts noticing how much smoke _itches_. When he's on it, grime and dust prickle constantly under his skin, points of cinder heat that never quite settle down. Sometimes it feels like he’s going to explode, like he's a few seconds away from just steaming away into the sky. He has to charge in a rush otherwise he’s afraid bits of him will get left behind.

It’s awesome, sure, but sometimes he misses the days when people were shooting at him all the time: at least then, he didn’t have the space to stop and think about what he was doing. Ever since leaving Seattle, he’s kept coming up with questions, usually late at night when he _really_ doesn’t need something else to keep him awake. Like, how did he know how to put himself back together again after doing the whole ‘smashing out of the sky on a bunch of DUPes’ thing? Or, where does the smoke go when he sucks it in? Does he actually turn into the smoke? If he absorbs tear gas, does that mean he’s part tear gas until he had got rid of it? Can he ever get rid of it? Or is he going to have tear gas particles in his body forever?

That stuff stings like a _bitch_ , going in and coming out. It can’t be good for him.

All this really proves what he’s always known, which is that thinking too hard is always a bad idea. It must be, right? He's gone from being happy with sheer awesomeness to lying awake wondering if smoking's bad for his health – ha!

Least it's only smoke. Not like he has a problem with being, like, neon.

God, he has no problem with being neon _at all_. Neon's a pure rush from start to finish. When the world isn't disappearing behind him in a blur of motion, it's standing still around him, waiting for him to pick it off. Everything's so effortless that even gravity doesn't really matter any more. Running straight up buildings has to be the greatest thing in the world. There is now basically nowhere he can't tag if he feels like it and there are days he feels like tagging _everything_. It's pretty amazing they haven't kicked him off the reservation for the shit he pulls when he gets _really_ bored.

He guesses they just like having someone who can run to the city and back in a day and fetch them stuff at the low-low cost of having a busted shop sign for a few hours. Fetch mocks him ruthlessly for acting like a free courier service but it's worth it to have an the excuse to run like that. He guesses he doesn't really  _need_ an excuse, only it's amazing how well people can hide neon signs when they really try and it's not like the forest is exactly brimming with them in the first place.

'Course, Fetch makes a living from being a professional courier service, sometimes anyway. Getting paid apparently makes all the difference. So she says. He suspects she's just being a jerk.

He's wondered aloud a few times to her about how it is that neon gives them speed like that. It's a gas that glows when you put electricity through it, right? He didn't sleep through every chemistry class and he's got the internet so he knows it doesn't just naturally make things go faster. So how the fuck does it give them super-speed? She usually just points out that natural doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with being a conduit and anyway they know a guy who can make angels out of TV screens so maybe how glowing gas lets them shoot kick-ass laser beams isn't the weirdest shit they have to deal with.

Which, yeah, is a good point. Because video, video is just plain _freaky_. Being on it is like constantly having his hand stuck in a core relay. Like he's buzzing right the way through, like he can _feel_ every signal flying through the air around him. He's noticed it's worse in the city than out in the reservation so maybe that's what it really is. The only time it stops is when he's _being_ a signal and then – it's like not really being anything at all. Just flying thoughts. It's hard to describe what that's like. The weirdest shit, pretty much.

Not that he'd give it up for a second. Being neon's a rush. Being video means he can  _freaking fly_ ! And pull out a magic sword. And summon  _freaking angels_ to back him up in a fight. Though he's been working on that last one, trying to work out how to get something a bit less . . . angelly. Nearest he's managed is a sort of deformed raven thing. Probably the problem is that he's got some of Eugene's memories mixed into his head and that kid really has it bad for MMOs. 

No, it's great. Maybe not quite as great as neon but great all the same.

Not like concrete. Being concrete's pretty shit. All cold and sharp and it makes his throat dry all the time. Makes him realise why the DUPes were all so pissy. Plus it's not like he has a ready supply of powdered concrete to absorb whenever he wants. He can't just go round smashing up buildings for supplies. OK, yeah, he _can_ but that kind of thing doesn't exactly spell human/conduit harmony. It's not like he ever wants to do anything with it anyway. Some ex-DUPes went into construction after the dust settled but he can't see a future there. He's not cut out to build houses. Couldn't stand it. Not when everything about concrete just makes him think of Augustine.

Augustine. Yeah. That's the biggest reason concrete's shit. Every time he uses it, it's like he's listening to her all over again, her thoughts ringing in his head, and he's seeing the daggers she left in the tribe and the way the plates grew up around Reggie's neck right before –

Yeah, so not anything he wants to be reminded of. Maybe there's more stuff he could do with concrete other than smash things but he doesn't think he's ever going to be in a place where he'll be able to do anything else. It's still too much  _her_ power. It'll always be that.

All the powers will always belong to the people he took them from. That's not just because of the memories either. He can sort of see how each power made the person he got it from who they are. Fetch _is_ neon, is the rush, in oh so many ways. Eugene – hell, the downside of video is how unreal it makes you feel sometimes and that sure can't help him avoid coming across as a total dick when he goes all god-mode on everyone. Which is, yeah, a shame because otherwise the kid's a pretty sweet guy with a hero-streak a mile wide. And Augustine – maybe Augustine got screwed in the head a bit by being concrete all the time. He's just about prepared to let her have that, to admit that her being so seriously fucked up might not have been entirely all her fault.

Maybe, just maybe, being smoke screwed with Hank's head too. Maybe being on the edge of boiling away every waking hour made it easier to be intimidated. You'd always be worrying about leaving bits of you behind, always be afraid you might not be able to put yourself back together again. Or maybe that isn't it at all. Hank's memories are full of the need to be free, like obsessively.

That was fair, he can see how being locked up in Curdan Cay for years would make you yearn to be smoke again. It isn't neon but it's still a thousand times better than being stuck in concrete handcuffs with only Augustine and her 'science team' for company. Only it wasn't just the DUP with Hank, was it? Robbing banks would have landed him in jail even without super-powers. A bad guy, Reggie had called him. A bad guy who did bad things.

Sure. He'd known that about Hank from the moment they'd run into each other. Like the dumb-ass he is, he'd trusted him anyway. Because he'd felt  _sorry_ for Hank and that worked out with Fetch and Eugene. Of course Hank'd turned him in. Hank would do anything to be free.  _Anything_ . Even more to be free and with his family.

He blames Hank for siding with Augustine and he can't blame him at all. Thinking back to that moment with the chain around Hank's neck, ready to pull it tight, that's another easy way to get no sleep. Part of him still thinks he should have done it. Part of him knows if Hank's kid hadn't have been there, he would have. God, and once he thought the worst thing he'd ever have on his conscience would be a bit of petty theft and giving Reggie an early heart attack.

Maybe that's the real reason smoke feels itchy. Because his memories of Hank are mixed up with Hank's memories and they all scratch about inside his head until he doesn't know what to think any more.

Shit. He knew he was right about the whole 'thinking too hard' thing. It's really going to screw up his life one of these days.


End file.
